Raumfeld One S review: Price and competition
Although the Raumfeld One S small, that doesn’t mean it’s cheap. This little speaker will set you back £199 and is the most budget of Raumfeld’s wireless speaker line-up. You might want to make a stereo pair with two and you can save £50 if you buy this way. The price, size and features mean that the Raumfeld One S has some tough competition in the ever expanding multi-room audio market. Sonos is recognised widely as one of the leading brands and is something of a benchmark. Sonos’ latest speaker is the Play:1, which is incidentally its smallest and cheapest product, costing £169 making it cheaper than the One S. The Play:1 is a fantastic little speaker so let’s see whether it’s worth paying extra for the One S.
Raumfeld One S review: Design and build
Like the Sonos range, you can get the One S in black or white with the latter being Raumfeld’s classic option. The design is square and industrial with straight lines which is quite different from Sonos’ approach but may fit in better with the style of your home. The One S really is a diddy speaker at just 18cm wide and it weighs 1.4kg so if you’re lacking on space then the speaker is well suited to squeezing into to narrow and tight gaps. We like the simplistic appearance with the fabric wrapping around to the sides. The build quality is excellent and there is some nice detail on offer such as the spun finish on the power button.
A major advantage of the One S is that’s it’s designed to work in bathrooms and kitchens thanks to a humidity resistant design. A rubber cover seals all the physical ports up at the back, although you won’t be able to use any apart from the power cable when this is attached. There’s an ethernet port which is partly for set up but you can use it for connectivity if you like. There’s also a USB port but it’s downward facing which is something of a design flaw since there’s not enough room for a normal sized flash drive.
Raumfeld One S review: Sound and features
Like other multi-room systems, you can simply start by buying one speaker and adding more as and when you choose (or can afford to). If you do have more than one Raumfeld speaker, you can place them in different rooms around your house and choose what music to play on each – or synchronise them to play the same tunes. The system works well and you can control everything that’s happening with the free app for iOS and Android. The app is fairly decent but not a patch on the polished Sonos app. It’s intuitive to use and we like the virtual volume dial and the addition of an EQ, even if it is limited to simple bass, mid and treble sliders. There are physical buttons on the top of the Raumfeld One S which are under a rubber cover (to keep any moisture out if you’re using it in a bathroom or kitchen). You’ve got volume control as you would expect and then four more buttons simply labelled 1-4. These work like a car stereo and allow you to create pre-sets. Long pressing one while listening to a radio station, album or playlist will assign it then in future you can just press the button to start it up. It’s a shame not to have play/pause or skip buttons, though.
Whether you connect you’re One S to the network via ethernet or Wi-Fi you can stream music from various different sources including computers on your network or the device you have the Raumfeld app installed on. It’s much more clunky than Sonos but works. If you’re happy with Spotify and/or Tidal then the sound quality of the One S is very good. Although Teufel has been making loudspeakers for decades, the speaker uses a Class D amp which is a shame but also not a surprise. See also: Best music streaming services. The One S uses a 2-way coax system with a 90mm mid-range driver and a 25mm tweeter. These are joined by side-mounted 95mm passive bass radiators (one on either side). The result is fairly well-rounded and suits the vast majority of music genres but can sound muddy at times. With the two Class D amps outputting a maximum of 40W RMS, we’re impressed with how loud you can pump the One S without losing sound quality and introducing distortion. Even with a lower quality radio stream you’ll won’t believe the sound is coming from this tiny box. Pairing two speakers into a stereo pair creates a huge sound stage. With the EQ you can tweak the sound to suit your taste, the room your in or the music you’re listening to but most of the time we found little need. The mid and bass frequencies do tend to dominate at default settings though so we recommend boosting the treble a little. Tech Advisor’s Reviews Editor, Chris has been reviewing all kinds of tech for over 10 years and specialises in audio. He also covers a range of topics including home entertainment, phones, laptops, tablets and more.
